An Anatomy of Stereotypes

“Stereotypes are the common colds of social interaction—ubiquitous, infectious, irritating, and hard to get rid of,” David Schneider writes in his new book, The Psychology of Stereotyping.

Growing up a male Caucasian in a rural area outside Indianapolis, Schneider wasn’t a member of a stereotyped group. In fact, he wasn’t aware that stereotyping existed. He’d met only a couple of African Americans, was unaware gays existed, and didn’t know a Jew until he went to graduate school at Stanford University in the 1960s.

“It was a real learning experience—that people are different,” he recalls about his years at Stanford. “Until then, I didn’t think about the attitudes I had about stereotypes because everyone around me shared them.”

Engulfed in the radical ’60s, Schneider became involved in racial protests, antiwar demonstrations, and other social movements that opened his eyes and mind to the stereotypes of various religions, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, genders, and other categories used to pigeonhole people.

More than 40 years later, the Rice social psychologist has compiled just about everything he’s learned about stereotypes in a 700-page book. Fifteen years in the making and exhaustively researched, The Psychology of Stereotyping presents a thorough summary of how views of stereotypes have changed since journalist Walter Lippmann first used the term in his 1922 book Public Opinion to refer to characteristics applied to others on the basis of their national, ethnic, or gender groups.

“In the early days, there was essentially universal agreement that stereotypes were rotten generalizations that smelled up the mental household,” Schneider writes. “They were inaccurate, largely produced by prejudiced minds, or shoveled into ignorant minds by prejudiced culture. They were negative, rigidly held, and impervious to disconfirming evidence. Unfortunately, most of this is wrong. Some stereotypes are like that, but most are not—not usually, not inevitably.”

The word “stereotype” comes from two Greek words meaning “solid” and “a model,” and this “solid model” initially referred to a metal plate used to print pages. That led to the connotation of rigidity and duplication or sameness. The traditional view is that stereotypes are rigid, and they stamp all to whom they apply with the same characteristics.

Using the basic definition that stereotypes are “qualities perceived to be associated with particular groups or categories of people,” Schneider acknowledges that stereotypes often are negative, untrue, and unfair, but he argues that stereotypes are essentially generalizations that can be useful. Nor do they have to be negative. As an example, Schneider cites the belief that Asian students are good at math. “To give up our capacity to form stereotypes,” he says, “we would probably have to give up our capacity to generalize, and that is a trade none of us should be willing to make.”

Nowadays not many social psychologists would refer to stereotypes as “inaccurate generalizations, maintained through ignorance, prejudice, and cultural realities,” Schneider writes. “We now recognize that stereotypes cannot be easily divorced from more ‘normal’ ways of thinking about people. Stereotypes are simply generalizations about groups of people, and as such they are similar to generalizations about dogs, computers, Anne Rice novels, city buses, or Beethoven piano sonatas.”

But he notes ways in which stereotypes such as “fat people are lazy” and “gay men are effeminate” differ from generalizations like “red, ripe apples taste good” and “Honda makes reliable cars.”

People are more complex than objects and animals, as evidenced by humans’ tendency to be less consistent in behavior over time and situation. “Apples never taste rotten on Tuesday and then good on Wednesday,” Schneider says, whereas people might have a bad day on which they are not as nice as they tend to be on other days.

Most categories for people have more important features than most objects do. Whereas the size and taste of apples might be the only features worth caring about, people might rightfully object to being singled out for only one or two features. “So when I say that Asians are good at math, I run the risk of seeing a certain student as better at statistics than she turns out to be,” Schneider says. “Even if I am correct, I have highlighted only one of the many things that go into her identity and make her the person she is.”

Generalizations about people tend to be more deeply embedded in humans’ mental lives and cultures than are other generalizations. “Our theories about computers and particular makes of cars tend not to be especially elaborate,” Schneider says, “nor do they have many links with our other beliefs, attitudes, and values.”

Stereotypes are complex because they’re often rooted in beliefs that reflect a combination of experience and culture. Most stereotypes have both positive and negative features that can vary in terms of how tenaciously they are held and how likely they are to be deployed for a given target. Likewise, prejudice and discrimination are not “simple, unidimensional constructs,” Schneider adds, noting that stereotypes and prejudice exist at several levels of consciousness.

“What we think we believe does not always capture all we do believe,” he notes. “It is vitally important to document implicit beliefs and attitudes and to make people aware that they may not be fully conscious of their stereotypes, their prejudices, and the ways they discriminate.”

Schneider has observed that behaviors related to stereotypes and prejudice are not as one-dimensional as most people assume. “Discrimination can be subtle as well as direct, and it can reflect situational and institutional pressures and also be caused in a straight-line fashion by prejudice,” he says.

He concedes that, on one level, stereotyping is inevitable behavior. “We can no more stop generalizing about people than about cars or animals,” he explains. “What is not inevitable, however, is that such generalizations have the force in our interpersonal lives that they presently do.”

Schneider suggests several ways to disarm stereotypes.

The first is to emphasize that people in almost all groups are diverse in regard to most features. “Almost no stereotypes apply to all, or in most cases to even a majority of, the people in the relevant category. One size does not fit all, and many people just don’t squeeze into their groups’ stereotypes the way they’re supposed to,” Schneider says. “The generalizations that should be important in our lives are not just the ones that discriminate one group from another, but rather those that have a high probability of applying to a given person.”

In his book, he uses the example of black males being more likely to be violent than white males. “The vast majority of black males I (and most of you) are likely to encounter are no more violent than white males. If I want to avoid being punched, stabbed, or shot, I can improve my odds much better by using generalizations about time of day, location, and situation than race or even gender.”

Another way to disarm stereotypes is to search for deeper explanations for group differences that evolve into stereotypes. “We need to continually remind ourselves and educate others that human behavior is complex and that group membership is generally a poor explanation for most behavior,” he says.

Although some people claim they don’t have a prejudiced bone in their bodies, their behavior often proves otherwise. “Hypocrisy and self-delusion aside,” Schneider says, “all of us, some of the time, behave in ways that belie our best conscious intentions.” People need to increase their awareness about the complexity of their own attitudes and behaviors. “It’s hard to imagine that we can make much progress in eliminating prejudice and discrimination so long as people maintain righteous beliefs about the purity of their hearts and their inability to behave in discriminatory ways.”

Schneider does not advocate that stereotypes be eliminated; instead, he hopes people will work toward a better understanding of the complexity and subtlety of stereotypes and their effect on behavior. “Then,” he says, “perhaps we can use that knowledge to treat our fellow human beings with the dignity they deserve.”

—B. J. Almond